Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination: Book 5: Khayyami Theology: The Epistemological Structures of the Robaiyat in All the Philosophical Writings of Omar Khayyam Leading to His Last Keepsake Treatise
About this ebook
In Book 5, to understand the theological epistemology (or, way of knowing God) framing Khayyam's Robaiyat as spread out in all his philosophical works, Tamdgidi further offers the texts and his updated Persian and new English translations and analyses of six primary writings that preceded Khayyam's last keepsake treatise on the universals of existence: 1: Khayyam's annotated Persian translation of Avicenna's sermon in Arabic on God and creation; 2: Khayyam's treatise in Arabic addressed to Nasawi (wrongly regarded as an Avicenna pupil) on the created world and worship duty; 3-5: Khayyam's three treatises in Arabic (all addressed to Abu Taher, to whom Khayyam also dedicated his treatise on algebra) that are separate chapters of a three-part treatise on existence on topics ranging from the necessity of contradiction, determinism, survival, attributes of existents, and the light of intellect on 'existent' as the subject matter of universal science; and 6: Khayyam's treatise in Arabic addressed to Moshkavi (a supportive Shia intellectual) in response to three questions on soul's survival, on the necessity of accidents, and on the nature of time.
The most fruitful way of understanding Khayyam's six texts is by regarding them as efforts made at defending his "succession order" thesis implicitly revealed when commenting on Avicenna's sermon and finalized in his last keepsake treatise. The texts served to offer the theological epistemology behind Khayyam's thesis, revealing his creative conceptualist view of existence that informed his poetic way of going about knowing God, creation, and himself within a unitary Islamic creationist-evolutionary worldview. Khayyam's way of knowing God and existence is non-dualistic, non-atomistic, and unitary in worldview, allowing for subject-included objectivity, probabilistic determinism, transcontinuous (or 'discontinuous') creative causality, transdisciplinarity, and transculturalism; it thus fulfils in a prescient way all the eight attributes of the quantum vision. Poetry is most conducive to unitary knowing, and subject-included objectivity must necessarily be self-reflective and thus engage intellective, emotional, and sensible modes of knowing. This explains why Khayyam transcended scholastic learning in favor of a poetic encounter with reality. What he meant by 'Drunkenness,' calling it the highest state of mind known to him, can thus be best understood as a unitary, quantum state of mind achieved by way of his poetry as a meditative art of self-purification. The goal, metaphorically, is to move from a way of knowing things as divisible grapes to a pure and unitary way of knowing them as indivisible Wine-paralleling what we call today moving from chunky Newtonian toward unitary quantum visions of reality.
The key for entering Khayyam's secret tent is realizing that what he primarily meant by 'Wine' in his Robaiyat was self-referentially his Robaiyat itself, a key openly hidden therein thanks to his theological epistemology. For him, the Robaiyat was a lifelong work on himself, serving also human spiritual awakening to its place and duty in the succession order of God's creation. It also served his aspiration for a lasting soul. He knew the now-proven worth of his secret magnum opus, and that is why he so much praised his 'Wine.'
About OKCIR—i
Published to Date in the Series—ii
About this Book—iv
About the Author—viii
Notes on Transliteration—xvii
Acknowledgments—xix
Preface to Book 5: Recap from Prior Books of the Series—1
Introduction to Book 5: Exploring the Theological Epistemology of the Robaiyat in Omar Khayyam’s Philosophical Treatises—7
CHAPTER I—Omar Khayyam’s Annotated Persian Translation of Avicenna’s “Splendid Sermon” in Arabic on God’s Unity and Creation: The Manuscript with a New English Translation, Followed by Comparative Textual Analysis—17
CHAPTER II—Omar Khayyam’s Treatise on the Created World and Worship Duty: The Arabic Manuscript with Updated Persian and New English Translations, Followed by Textual Analysis—85
CHAPTER III—Part 1 of Omar Khayyam’s Treatise on Existence Addressed to Abu Taher Regarding the Necessity of Contradiction, Determinism, and Survival: The Arabic Manuscript and Updated Persian and New English Translations, Followed by Textual Analysis—175
CHAPTER IV—Part 2 of Omar Khayyam’s Treatise on Existence Addressed to Abu Taher Regarding Attributes: The Arabic Manuscript and Updated Persian and New English Translations, Followed by Textual Analysis—237
CHAPTER V—Part 3 of Omar Khayyam’s Treatise on Existence Addressed to Abu Taher Regarding the Light of Intellect on ‘Existent’ as the Subject Matter of Universal Science: The Arabic Manuscript and Updated Persian and New English Translations, Followed by Textual Analysis—305
CHAPTER VI—Omar Khayyam’s Treatise Addressed to Moshkavi in Response to Three Questions on Soul’s Survival, the Necessity of Accidents, and the Nature of Time: The Arabic Manuscript and Updated Persian and New English Translations, Followed by Textual Analysis—347
CHAPTER VII—From Grapes to Wine, Khayyam’s Unitary Way of Knowing: Integratively Understanding the Structures of Omar Khayyam’s Theological Epistemology in the Robaiyat as Spread Out in All His Philosophical Writings—409
Conclusion to Book 5: Summary of Findings—483
Appendix: Transliteration System and Book 5 Glossary—513
Book 5 Cumulative Glossary of Transliterations—526
Book 5 References—535
Book 5 Index—541
About the author
Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, Ph.D., is the founding director and editor of OKCIR: Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics) and its journal, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge (ISSN: 1540-5699), which have served since 2002 to frame his independent research, pedagogical, and publishing initiatives. Besides his currently in progress work published in the book series Omar Khayyam’s Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination (Okcir Press), he has previously authored Liberating Sociology: From Newtonian Toward Quantum Imaginations: Volume 1: Unriddling the Quantum Enigma (Okcir Press), Advancing Utopistics: The Three Component Parts and Errors of Marxism (Routledge/Paradigm) and Gurdjieff and Hypnosis: A Hermeneutic Study (Palgrave Macmillan). Tamdgidi has published numerous peer reviewed articles and chapters and edited more than thirty journal issues. He is a former associate professor of sociology specializing in social theory at UMass Boston and has taught sociology at SUNY-Binghamton and SUNY-Oneonta.
Tamdgidi holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology in conjunction with a graduate certificate in Middle Eastern studies from Binghamton University (SUNY). He received his B.A. in architecture from U.C. Berkeley, following enrollment as an undergraduate student of civil engineering in the Technical College of the University of Tehran, Iran.
His areas of scholarly and practical interest are the sociology of self-knowledge, human architecture, and utopystics—three fields of inquiry he invented in his doctoral studies and has since pursued as respectively intertwined theoretical, methodological and applied fields of inquiry altogether contributing to what he calls the quantum sociological imagination. His research, teaching, and publications have been framed by an interest in understanding how world-historical social structures and personal selves constitute one another. This line of inquiry has itself been a result of his longstanding interest in understanding the underlying causes of failures of the world’s utopian, mystical, and scientific movements in bringing about a just global society.
It was during his undergraduate studies at U.C. Berkeley and in the course of his mentorship by the painter and design architect Jesse Reichek (1916-2005) that Tamdgidi’s notion and project “human architecture” was born. During his graduate studies at SUNY-Binghamton, he was mentored in methods, theory, and world-systems studies by Terence K. Hopkins (1928-1997) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019), and further in dialectics by Dale Tomich and on space and society by Anthony D. King, amid a uniquely autonomous and flexible transdisciplinary Graduate Program in Sociology founded by T. K. Hopkins.
